1. Field of the Description
The present description relates, in general, to methods and systems for three dimensional (3D) printing, and, more particularly, to methods of controlling 3D printing to fabricate an object having user-selectable or custom surface reflectance on at least portions of the surface of the object.
2. Relevant Background
Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is a process of making a 3D solid object, having virtually any shape, from a digital model. 3D printing is achieved using an additive process in which successive layers of material are laid down or deposited to form different shapes. To perform a print, a 3D printer reads the design from a previously stored data file (e.g., virtual cross sections from a computer aided design (CAD) model or the like) and lays down successive layers of liquid, powder, paper, or sheet material to build the model from a series of cross sections. These layers are joined or automatically fused to create the final shape such that 3D printing can produce almost any shape or geometric feature.
Recent advance in 3D printers have enabled manufacturers and consumers to print 3D objects from 3D models with high accuracy. Printing of colored 3D models is also now possible using a multi-material 3D printer. It is expected that the popularity and use of 3D printers will continue to grow in the coming years especially as costs associated with the 3D printers continues to decrease even as the accuracy of the 3D printers increases over time.
One significant drawback, though, of 3D printing is that the printing devices typically cannot directly replicate the reflection properties or reflectance of an object being created with a 3D model. For example, it may be useful to manufacture an object that has two or three different reflection properties such as being transparent in portions, being highly reflective or having a glossy finish in other portions, and/or being somewhat reflective (and colored, in some cases) or having a matte finish in still other portions of the object. However, with present 3D printing techniques, the reflection properties of the printed object or model are defined by or due to the chosen printing material.
Unfortunately, available printing materials offer a rather restrictive set of reflectance properties such as matte, slightly glossy (e.g., polished plastic or the like), and very specular (e.g., transparent plastic). Further, even if one of these materials is available and provides a desired reflectance for a surface of a printed object or model, existing 3D printers only support a small number of concurrent materials, which severely limits the gamut of printable reflectance.